


Choices are a Thing?

by SonglordsBug



Series: two boys and a droid [4]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Finn doesn't know how to process all these choices, Gen, but rey and poe and ben have his back, feed him and clothe him and put him to bed!, his anxiety comes out differently because it doesn't have the same oh fuck focus from the movies, what do you do with a brand new stormtrooper?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:09:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23317408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonglordsBug/pseuds/SonglordsBug
Summary: When Poe changes the universe, or at least the fate of Ben, some things change and some don't. Finn still rescues and is rescued by Poe, but with less terror and trauma immediately afterward. This makes adapting to being out of the First Order harder as his anxiety bubbles up in different places. But Poe and Ben and Rey have his back and are there to help him figure things out.
Relationships: Finn & Ben Solo, Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Poe Dameron & Finn
Series: two boys and a droid [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1674883
Kudos: 6





	Choices are a Thing?

**Author's Note:**

> crossposting from stumblr

In Full Circle I mentioned that Poe and Finn still have an adventurous meeting. Poe gets himself captured, but not for something so important as finding the last Jedi, and FN-2187 just found out that he doesn’t want to kill and that he wants out. They get away and Poe names him Finn.

The escape goes much smoother- there’s no bot to find on the planet and they get away clean. And then it’s just a couple of easy days flight to the Resistance base. They arrive and as Finn stands there watching Ben and Poe greet each other, he feels completely lost.

This is a Finn who didn’t feel hunted and attacked, since he and Poe got away clean, without all the drama of the movie. This is a Finn who hasn’t panicked and tried to run off to the Outer Rim and then found his courage so that he could rescue Rey. This is a Finn whose panic will come out in other ways since he’s been dropped into a world diametrically opposed to the world he grew up in; and more than that, he’s at the source of most of the horror stories he’s heard.

Then a voice greets him from behind and it’s Rey telling him that Ben and Poe are always like that and to ignore it. This cues some banter between the three, and Finn is baffled by the way he’s included.

Then General Organa shows up. And Finn is understandably anxious- this is a General, and she’s one of the bogeymen figures of the Resistance. She asks whether they need medical, and before Finn can panic (c'mon, we all know medical is A Bad Place for Stormtroopers) Poe answers cheerfully that they just have some bumps and bruises. Leia frowns suspiciously but agrees that they can wait to be checked out by medical tomorrow. She then says something about wanting to get a health baseline for Stormtroopers.

She gives Finn a thoughtful look, noticing how scared he now looks, and says that the three of them had better keep a close watch over Finn because this was bound to be overwhelming. Finn kinda figures they’re his guards or something, but they keep smiling at him, and one of them is Poe, who he’s spent the last several days with, and what the fuck? He’s very relieved when the General goes away.

Poe, Ben, and Rey decide he needs quarters, clothes and other necessities, a shower, and a meal. This leads to an exhausting series of moments where they keep giving him choices and treating him like a person- whatever that is. It’s baffling and aweing and touching and terrifying.

They drag him to whoever is in charge of rooming and Finn is mostly silent, overwhelmed, while the others discuss the options. He ends up assigned to a single in the same hall as Ben and Poe’s room and Rey’s room. Finn is dumbfounded to discover that he gets a room to himself and completely blown away to learn that it has it’s own ‘fresher.

Of the three, it’s Ben who notices that Finn is already overwhelmed. Poe is tired and has always been good at fitting in and getting along. Rey, while still having desert related issues, is very adaptable. Ben never quite grew out of being awkward and shy.

So he quietly takes control.

He sends Rey to get food, with an admonishment through the Force that it be simple and that she get them all the same thing. He reminds her of what meals were like just after the desert.

Then he and Poe escort Finn to get some clean clothes since all he has is the fairly rank underarmour on his back. Finn nearly hyperventilates over the color choices, so Ben grabs the plainest stuff available and moves them along.

They meet Rey at Ben and Poe’s room and Finn has a chance to calm down a bit before he thoroughly enjoys their meal. Poe has to be kicked to be kept from complaining about blandness, but Finn thinks it has so much more flavor than the rations he grew up eating.

Then they show him to his new room and leave him to sleep. He’s glad to clean up but it feels awful wasteful to have his own 'fresher.

And then he has trouble sleeping because he has never in his life slept in a room alone.

He brings this up later and they discuss solutions. There are problems with giving him a roommate, so it’s decided that he’ll stay alone. But they do figure out some white noise that helps him sleep.

Breakfast that morning happens in the communal dining area and Finn stops dead in the doorway.

It’s not the crowd- that’s more normal to him than eating in a small room with just three other people. It’s the wall of noise- troopers are expected to be silent, but here people are talking and calling out and yelling all over the room.

Our three Jedi manage to throw up some sort of Force barrier that muffles the sound and then Ben drags him to a quietish corner while Rey and Poe get the food. Finn manages to catch his breath right before Poe and Rey show up with the food- and unlike last night, they each have different foods. Finn’s not sure he knew there were this many different kinds of food, let alone just breakfast foods.

His food is the plainest but he really enjoys his bowl of cream of wheat and then has his mind blown by the fresh, not powdered, egg. And then the others let him taste their cream of wheat: Rey loads hers up with butter and cream; Ben likes his with brown sugar and raisins; and Poe sprinkles his with cinnamon and chile. Who knew you could vary things so much!

Their trip to medical after that is a disaster, of course. They just want to make sure that Poe wasn’t lying about how injured they are. They also want to get a baseline for Stormtrooper help. Finn does not believe them and it just gets worse from there, but they do make it through.

After the first few rocky days, they get him settled- he has enough clothes for a week or two, he’s learning about and enjoying food, medical is mostly sorted, whatever necessary paperwork has happened, and he’s started getting introduced to people around the base.

Then they start asking him what he wants to do.

Instead of being thrust back into the war so fast that he didn’t have time to process everything that was happening, he’s had time to get situated, and now, once again, he’s being asked, being given choices.

His first answer is “whatever you want or tell me to do.”

And he has no answer when asked what he WANTS to do.

They talk him through his history, about working for Sanitation, about deciding to escape because he didn’t want to kill and was going to be reconditioned. And when he doesn’t express any interest in going back to fighting or in cleaning, they tell him that he doesn’t have to and that they’ll figure something out for him.

His response is basically “okay, that sounds fake, but okay.”


End file.
